Tann ten Lever Locks 6.5 gauge

[Ant]

See these two locks I found the left hand lock case spare (LH pic) and as it occurred to me that it is handed the other way to the standard Right hand one (in picture).
As there was no bolt assembly or lock cap with it, I have made one up (just to see how difficult it would be) as no brass to hand used an old mounting block off a Tann anti Herding device just the right size, lenght and width only trouble is the bit missing from the bolt (where the fixing bolt went through) still can always braze a bit in there later.

So What I want to know is which way would the key hole be cut as for the life of me I can't ever remember seeing one handed this way Though I must have at some time But water under the bridge and all that, plus brain full up with other useless information.
Regards to all and seasons greetings Anthony.

[Huw Eastwood]

Ant- I thought I was familiar with all things Tann 10-lever until I saw these!

I've seen these locks handed on the old bankers and treasury safes- up shoot and down shoot, but they were always on the big 2 gauge keys with the brass curtain fitted- plus the keys were of course always about a foot long because of the thickness of the doors.

I've only seen the 6.5 gauge versions fitted on the Gov/MoD Grade 1A's- they always had the brass curtains as well, but oddly the Tann's were always mounted up-shoot with the keyway pointing horizontally out to the side, so the key went in with the key-bit flat. I've never seen those big brass case 10-levers with very short 6.5 gauge keys and without a curtain like you have.

They must be off something with a thin door but still needing a high level of security or they'd have used one of their other lever locks as used on internal drawers etc. Could be off Safe deposit chutes or rotary hopper/deposit perhaps?

With regard to the keyhole on your spare, looking at your complete lock on the right it's a down shoot lock assuming it was originally fitted with the keyhole the right way up from the outside. That would make the other handed spare an up-shoot lock which would need the keyhole pointing to the left in your photo. That's all I can come up with as I've seen countless Tann's and Grade 1A's but not any like yours without the curtain and short keys- hope this helps a bit

[Ant]

Hello Max, I thought it would be an upshoot bolt, so perhaps off a book room door that was under dual control. (perhaps locking in to the bolt strap?)I doubt that its off a N/Safe shute or the old Tann Rotary trap as they were less levers and on the rotary lock I think I seem to remember the bolt head had a concave curved bolt head to allow for the curve of the drum. Like the some of the old Chubb safe locks that locked into the B/Throw Scroll

But these Tann locks I've had in the workshop drawer unit and I've moved them around during 4 house moves and never stumbled upon them till the other week and decided to make it up to a working lock as trying to downsize by parting most of my old locks I've accumulated over the years.
Thanks for the reply

[Doug MacQueen]

Not that I always know what I am talking about, but it is not all that unusual for the big companies like Chubb, Tann, as well as Diebold and Mosler to make specials. I have only a 10 lever like that but with curtain and was told it was made by Kromer. Is this correct? Doug

[Ant]

Hi Doug, Yes Tann did make some strange locks as this one I've attached Though only a 5 lever;were made for a large UK bank for their Strongroom doors. As to if Kromer made your Grade III govenment Ministry 6.5 G lock am not sure, though during the early eighties Tann did contract out lock making to some different firms As I remember picking about 100 locks up from a firm down in Redruth. Though can’t remember what job it was for!

[Huw Eastwood]

Ant- I'm amazed- another one! Now I know how little I know about those brass cased Tann's and how few of the variations I encountered! A 5-lever- that's unbelievable- they even cast those locks with thinner cases then for versions with less levers- I had no idea. Don't tell me, your next surprise is a 2-lever version with 1 inch keys for office desks... Thanks for posting them Wish I'd kept the ones I had now for swaps

[Gary Stephenson]

The original locks were probably from something like Tann or Ratner bookroom doors

[safeman]

The original locks were probably from something like Tann or Ratner bookroom doors

This may help.

The TANN 9 Lever Bent Case Safe Lock.

After the successful introduction of the small case KROMER 9 lever Novum lock into the Borehamwood safes with its very considerable reduction in boltwork inventories a similar exercise was proposed for Billericay.

The "9 lever bent case lock" was designed about 1975 to replace the standard 10 lever brass case lock on the Billericay safe range and it was projected to eventually replace the Novum lock at Borehamwood.

The "footprint", bolt gauge and bolt throw agreed with that of the small case 3 & 4 wheel combination locks. It was almost 100% interchangeable and therefore gave a considerable cost saving in the number of boltwork parts required.

The final design did not agree with the original lever layout drawing given to the Billericay design office. (This was not unusual with the internal politics of that period ‑ WHS no longer controlled the drawing offices). The lever tool was rushed through and a number of Novum cases were bought from KROMER to facilitate initial production.

In order to reduce the effect of manufacturing tolerances the levers were cut in packs to the operating keys. No barrel and curtain was fitted in the original locks; it being considered that full false notching was sufficient. These were machined in at the same time as the gate, using ganged cutters. NOTE! The number 1 lift lever had its leading racking radius increased by a squeeze pressing operation and was never false notched. It has been noticed that KROMER did notch this lever, but not the first batches(?).

Due to lack of prototype testing a rash of things when wrong with the first production batch.

These early locks were "tight" in their action (a combination of thick lever material and locksmiths not face filing the levers. The sluggish action sometimes allowed the live AED to pull bolts out of the unlocked position. Originally the lanket was open to the talon ‑ which allowed a stop screw to be fitted through the rear face of the lock, as and when wanted. The factory decided that this open lanket was "useless" and re‑tooled the bolt tail to the closed lanket as seen today. Thus the stop screw had to be moved to the cap. Changing it now meant that the lock had to removed from the equipment in order to make any alteration.

Very considerable trouble was experienced when someone in main assembly decided that some peculiar oil would silence a "squeak", but after a few weeks in service the oil thickened so much that many lockouts occurred. Oiling of lock mechanisms or keys was strictly forbidden.

The Billericay shop floor and Production had this urge to alter components usually without considering the overall design or how one modification might start a knock‑on effect. E.g. they also moved the lever pivot back a few thousands of an inch, (this was a fairly safe modification since within narrow limits no geometric conflicts occur) but they did not move the bolt stump to suit ‑ which put the talon out... Their tactic was usually to say it wouldn't work but by doing this it did ‑ please alter the drawing. Most problems were due to incorrectly made parts anyhow, and a minor adjustment could easily have been done by the locksmith ‑ who generally was only too happy to use a file.


They insisted that the racking was weak when subjected to heavy pressure from near wrong keys ‑ and produced examples where the leading bar had bent inwards, effectively closing down the gating width to less than the bolt stump thickness. This was "cured"(??) after they were told to leave the pocket out of the lower 6 levers, i.e. to use a plain blank. The pocket was retained in the upper 3 levers since they were required to fall and hold the bolt in the withdrawn position.

As boltworks were rationalised to use this lock the need for a nozzle became apparent since some mountplates were well off the inner door face. It was needed to capture the key as it left the keyguide otherwise the key could be turned within the glass plate space. The nozzle became a standard fitting.

When the Billericay works closed this lock was transferred to KROMER and they made it for several years. Borehamwood Production Control could never get their lock stocks correct and there were many occasions when, with a lock had a nil inventory, KROMER could not be inveigled into bringing their computer programmed deliveries forward. Eventually someone decided that an alternative supplier was necessary. LOWE & FLETCHER were chosen ‑ their unit price being slightly less than the German which allegedly justified the change. But there was an enormous hidden tool charge...

All Billericay and KROMER made locks used the standard TANN detachable bit but these apparently gave L & F problems and a switch was made to the slip bit assembly (similar to the standard CHUBB "P" pattern and "RanTann"). This in turn gave trouble since, unless the slip bit itself was made to be a snug fit in the key stem, it dropped slightly out of stem after the key had rotated 180 degrees and trapped in the keyway. A simple, inadequate, barrel was added to the nozzle assembly to cure this.

More recently the slip bit was changed to the bottom insert design as used by SMP. This too gave problems: the bit falling out if improperly secured and in some instances the key missing the stop screw, but only when unlocking!

Visually the makers of the three groups of lock can be determined as follows:

TANN Always had one cap fixing screw sealed with paint.

KROMER Always a grey hammer finish on the case and a semi matt battleship grey cap.

L & F Always a passivated zinc plated case; most locks having slip bit keys.


Differs.

This 9 lever lock had a theoretical 10,077,696 differs. The differ chart had a factorial 6 series (=720) for the first 6 digits and a selection of combinations (= 53, a prime) for the top 3 levers. The factorial series was restricted to have a constant in the 6th position until all the 120 available combinations had been permutated (= 6360). The constant was then changed, and so on. This made the chart easy to produce in batches and gave 38,160 differs before the system needed altering.



Examples of the first 6 positions of the keys:

key 1 = 123456... ) first batch (First factorial = 12345)
key 2 = 123546... ) [with a constant '6' in the sixth position]
key 3 = 124356... )

key 6361 = 123465... ) second batch
key 6362 = 123645... ) [with a constant '5' in the sixth position]
key 6363 = 124365... ) etc.

Thus every key differed by two levers in the first 6; one high one low. The mini chart for the top 3 levers was incremented each differ so the system gave a well scrambled chart.

After 1980 WHS personally supplied Billericay with all their differ charts using a home computer to produced them.

Charts for these lock were later supplied to KROMER and later still, on request, one batch to LOWE & FLETCHER.

[Gary Stephenson]

Cheers John, there was also a 6 lever version on some of the lower end safes, who or what is WHS?

[safeman]

Cheers John, there was also a 6 lever version on some of the lower end safes, who or what is WHS?

Hello Gary. WHS was William Henry Stanton whose place I took when he retired. Probably the foremost Lock Expert in this and other countries. He co-operated with Kromer and Ingersoll with Patents in both companies plus personally for the 3G110 Chubb lock. I'll try and add some detail.

I was first introduced to Bill Stanton in the Tann Billericay factory around the late 1960's. He had not long joined the company from Chubb at Wolverhampton where he had been working in lock and safe design. Before joining Chubb he had been working as a safe mechanic in Coventry opening and repairing safes of all descriptions, a background identical to my own which helped us form an immediate and lasting friendship.

When Bill joined Tanns in 1965, his first project was already awaiting him - an order for 7000 locks for the Ministry of Works. He trained up 4 girls and worked with them for the first month sorting out the problem locks and in doing so, proved to Tann (and the male locksmiths) that female labour could make locks, reaching a figure of 300 a week towards the end of the order.

When a second order followed, the work was transferred to the Westbury factory (Tann-Synchronome) where he trained a local team which didn’t go particularly well but they finally got the initial batches through the rigid Ministry inspection. By this time, he was only making monthly visits to Westbury on other projects and one day decided to take one of the locks to pieces. Suffice to say that shortcuts had been taken resulting in the reading of the riot act and rectification of the problem. In a recent re-telling of this incident his comment was "never again would it happen - and so I became a really awkward sod, as you know :))" So now we all know how it started!

Although I was to work alongside Bill as part of the R&D team at Borehamwood, I was still operating out of Tann Scotland, but I still managed to join the team after our test work for the statutory Indian or Italian meal. When I was transferred to Borehamwood in 1986, Bill had already taken retirement but of course we were then in close enough proximity to partake of the delights of Diomedes Cypriot establishment in St.Albans.

In setting up the new safe museum I more or less took on the role of Tann historian, but in fact there was not much archival material available. I was to learn from Bill that when John Tanns were acquired by the Stratford Equipment Company it was decided to close Tann's City offices in Newgate Street and that there was no point in keeping all these old records, display material, etc. (LJT reputedly said "... this company is for the future, not the past, junk it!") By good fortune Bill managed to prevent some of the material from being destroyed and it is only now, on his passing that it is coming to light.

Probably the most important archive was what was known as the Finishing Books or sometimes the Numbers Books. These dated back as far as 1863 and comprised entries for every piece of safe and door equipment made. They were kept at the factories, Hackney, Old Ford, Billericay, and lastly Borehamwood. In total there were 154 books. When Tann, and then Tann Rosengrens were absorbed by the Gunnebo Group who had already acquired Chubb, it was decided that these books should all be transferred to Chubb's Wolverhampton premises from where they operated their own safe identification system for insurers, and where it is assumed, they would then extend this service for Tann products. Mysteriously they have disappeared and Chubbs cannot locate them.

But by the best of good fortune Bill had made a most detailed study of the books - all 154 of them. When told of the disappearance his reply was "Maker's books, how I looked after them !" "I read every flaming page of those books making note of who made what, when, for whom, with totals, start years of models .... " All this he had done in his own time by taking a small number of the books home each night for over a year! All this without knowing that one day his meticulous notes would be all that is left of these invaluable records and possibly even of more value than having the actual books.

And history does repeat itself. Recently he wrote " after I left (Tann) I was told that during a clean up someone said 'Bills's old stuff - junk it" .
The books stayed because they were still in use for identification work but old publicity material and catalogues all went.

I haven’t touched on Bill's lock background mainly because I'm a safeman, not a lockman. I had been told that his name was mentioned on the Patent for the Chubb 3G110 lock. I was well aware of the magnitude of his lock collection having had to manipulate the stairs in his house which was lined with old ammunition boxes all laden with locks.

When I look through my folder of emails to and from BIll, it seems that most of them have nothing to do with safes or locks, but are more inclined towards some of my computer problems, or, in the earlier pre PC days, Indian food recipes. I can even date my first computer with Bill's email - " heard you got a computer beastie ... Wow." That was December 2002.

More to follow.